The present invention relates to a fat substituted for meat food which is added to processed food of minced meat and the like.
People have a tendency to like processed food comprising low fat meat of a coarse minced meat type. Particularly, they imagine processed food such as low fat sausages and hamburgers having meat grains to be of good quality and healthy.
Sausages are generally produced by adding water, common salt, a phosphate, granulated sugar and the like to no fat pork and fat such as lard and beef tallow, casing the mixture and heat-treating the case. The fat such as lard and beef tallow is used to obtain food of juicy and agreeable tastes and to lower the production cost. However, since the amount of fat added to the sausages comes to about 30% by weight, such a processed food having a high caloric value is disliked by consumers.
In such market environment, some kinds of food are proposed to reduce food calories, a low fat sausage, containing an emulsified composition obtained by emulsifying eatable oils and fats in water with an eatable surface-active agent and a process for production of the composition (Japanese unexamined patent application number 1-112969), processed meat food characterized in that it is obtained by heating to coagulate a mixture of an emulsified liquid of thermal solidifying protein and oil with finely ground meat (Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication Number 62-3768) and the like.
In the above processes, reduction of calorific values and improvement of tastes are expectable. However, since gelated materials are not mixed with meat, coarse ground meat type sausages agreeable to the taste in which meat and fat substitute are dispersed can not be obtained.
Furthermore, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication Number 1-277449, food whose gelling power is strengthened by adding a whey protein isolate (W.P.I.) and a milk serum mineral is disclosed. Though the food has elasticity, it is not a coarse ground meat type. Reduction of the calorific value is not expectable.
In Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication Number of 63-283545, heat-irreversible food having high gel strength is disclosed. The food is jelly or the like which contains xanthan gum and W.P.I. or another proteins and a pH value of the food solution is kept at an isoelectric point or less of the protein contained. However, the food is not a coarse ground meat type and reduction of the calorific value is not expectable. Moreover, there is no example of ground meat food such as sausage and ham.